I made this piece for Sherry.  The pendant measures 1 1/2 x 3/4 inches.  The ruby chip in this stone is more violet than red.  The green mineral is a metamorphic silicate, including calcium and aluminum and is found in Africa.  Zoisite is considered by some to be an energy amplification stone for healing.  Ruby, the birthstone for July, is popular and we are asked for it often.

Today we are off to Oxnard for the Salsa Festival, touching off a two week trip that will also give us a break from the heat and a trip to Pismo Beach:  clam chowder at the Splash Café – yum.

He stands about four feet tall and is three feet wide.  Big John is a 24″ rock slabbing saw.  He acquired his name from our daughter, who helped us move him into his home in the rock shop, weighing several hundred pounds.

Powered by a large electric motor, Big John was built about the middle of the last century and is a work horse of our shop, cutting rock into slabs or slices. The rock is clamped into a vise, that rides slowly along a gear driven track, into the path of the saw blade:  a steel blade, impregnated with diamonds, that grinds away at the rock, bathed in a cutting oil.

“You actually made that?” people often exclaim.  Yes we do and Big John  is a big part of that process.

This coming weekend we will be showing at the Oxnard Salsa Festival, just north of Los Angeles.  120,000 people find this event popular each year.  We are looking forward to it.

The slag is jet black, the silicate rich remains of the furnace used the extract the copper from the host rock.  This molten material was cast aside and grew to this mound, taller than a house.

The men of Rosalie would hold community dances on this slag pile, almost perfectly flat – it made a good dance floor.  Life in the desert, a hundred years ago.

You can see this mound from the I-15, in the desert – if you know where to look.